Phillies Notebook: Sandberg makes return to Wrigley on Friday

NEW YORK — The flag snaps in the infamous Chicago winds, strapped to the top of the right-field foul pole at Wrigley Field between those featuring Billy Williams’ No. 26 and Greg Maddux’s No. 31.

Ryne Sandberg was a North Side icon, playing nearly 2,000 games at second base for the Cubs in a career that included 10 All-Star selections, nine Gold Gloves and the 1984 N.L. Most Valuable Player award. His No. 23 flies with the other Cubs greats.

Friday, the 2005 Baseball Hall of Fame inductee will return to Wrigley in uniform for the first time since his playing days, and he will return wearing the team uniform that he sported the first time he stepped into the iconic ballpark in 1981.

Thirty-two years ago, he was a 21-year-old September call-up for the Phillies, wearing No. 37, dressing in a storage closet attached to the visiting clubhouse. This time he will be in the manager’s office, again on the visitor’s side as the Phillies and Cubs meet for three games.

“It wasn’t all that bad, because it was the big leagues,” said Sandberg, whose goal of being a major-league manager came to be earlier this month with the Phillies following the dismissal of Charlie Manuel. “I’m anxious to see it from the visiting dugout. It’s a different vantage of things. That’ll be different. I was there in ’81, but I haven’t been there too much since then.”

The Phillies made one of the most dreadful trades in organization history when they shipped Sandberg and Larry Bowa to Chicago for shortstop Ivan DeJesus. To this day, Bowa, who preceded Manuel as the Phillies’ manager, jokingly refers to Sandberg as “the throw-in” in that trade.

It was with Bowa’s bat that Sandberg got his first major-league hit with the Phillies at Wrigley Field. He went into what would end up as a 14-0 Cubs rout for Mike Schmidt and played shortstop.

His first and only hit as a Phillie was off Mike Krukow, and there are a few distinct features that serve as evidence of that first of 2,386 career knocks for Sandberg.

“I asked Larry Bowa if he had any extra bats that I could use in the game,” he recalled, “so he loaned me a bat and I got my first hit with a Larry Bowa bat. I still have the bat and the ball. It was a flare to right field slightly off the end of the bat, and the Rawlings (stamp) on the ball came off on the bat.

“So I have the ball and the bat, and there’s no writing on the ball. It’s all on the bat.”

The Sandberg/Bowa dynamic has played a big role in Sandberg’s career path. When both were traded to Chicago, it was Bowa who took the youngster under his wing. They would have lunch together and discuss strategy against that day’s opposing pitcher. And while Sandberg doesn’t have the overly Type A personality that Bowa has, his no-nonsense approach to laying down the law as manager has a distinct Bowa feel to it.

Prior to Wednesday’s game, Sandberg went on MLB Network with Bowa, where they exchanged stories about each other, with Sandberg recalling the time Bowa celebrated an 0-for-20 slump by turning the only toilet accessible from the Cubs dugout at Wrigley into a million shards of porcelain with his bat.

Wednesday, Sandberg recalled when the pair first arrived in Chicago in 1982, Wrigley Field didn’t have lights, and popups that entered Chicago’s notoriously shifty winds and a high summertime sun could be an adventure.

“Larry told me, ‘You’re younger than I am, so any time there’s a popup in the middle of the field, you’ve got it,’” Sandberg said. “Then when Shawon (Dunston) took over at shortstop, I told him, ‘You’re the younger guy, so any popup in the middle of the diamond, that’s your ball.’

“For the four years that I was (teammates) with (Bowa), I really learned a lot about the game. Just being with him — spending the time after the game having a beer, going to pregame lunch and talking about the game.”

Sandberg was the iconic Cub in the 1980s and 1990s, and only Ernie Banks might be more revered by that fan base more than he. After his retirement, Sandberg spent a game sitting with the crowd in the bleachers at Wrigley Field.

“It was pretty cool,” he said of the experience. “One of the games they were playing out there was passing a cup and you put five bucks and you got the cup, and the game was whether the ball ended up on the pitcher’s mound dirt (at the end of the inning). If it did, you collected the (money in the) cup; if not, you passed it to the next person.”

Sandberg spent more than 1,100 games in the home dugout at Wrigley, and there are those in Chicago who are upset that he isn’t still there as manager. After spending several years as a special instructor, then a minor-league manager with the Cubs, Sandberg moved over to the Phillies’ organization for the 2011 season when he was neither hired as manager nor added to the big-league coaching staff. He spent two seasons managing Triple-A Lehigh Valley before joining the Phils as third-base coach this season.

He doesn’t have any regrets, nor does he have hard feelings about the Cubs’ decision to bypass him for the managerial position.

“That’s baseball,” he said. “I think that it was necessary to get to the major leagues in some capacity — coach, manager, whatever it might be. As it turns out, it was a smart thing because this year, being here and being a third base coach and getting back to the major leagues was a stepping stone.

“I really don’t know what to expect (in Chicago), but I’m excited about going there,” he said. “I guess the first line of duty will be taking the lineup card to home plate. I guess we’ll see (the reaction of Chicagoans). It should be fun, should be a lot of fun. It should be exciting.”